on wore itself slowly into night,
and just as dark fell--it falls like a stage curtain in these
latitudes--we joyfully descried the steam-launch waiting for us behind a
sandy point. Once embarked upon her, we made better speed through the
night. It was cloudy, with a struggling moon, which just showed us a
labyrinth of flat, densely wooded isles, their margins fringed with
mangrove trees. Exhausted by a journey of more than thirty hours without
sleep, we were now so drowsy as to be in constant danger of falling off
the tiny launch, which had neither seats nor bulwarks, and even the
captain's strong tea failed to rouse us. Everything seemed like a
dream--this lonely African river, with the faint moonlight glimmering
here and there upon its dark bosom, while the tree tops upon untrodden
islets flitted past in a slow, funereal procession, befitting a land of
silence and death.

At last, when it was now well past midnight, a few lights were seen in
the distance, and presently we were at Beira. As we touched the shore we
were told that the German steamer had already arrived, two days before
her time, and was to start in the morning at ten o'clock. So we made
straight for her, and next day at noon sailed for Delagoa Bay.

Beira stands on a sand-spit between the ocean and the estuary of the
Pungwe River. Though the swamps come close up to it, the town itself is
tolerably healthy at all seasons, because the strong easterly breeze
blows from the sea three days out of four. Before 1890 there was hardly
even a house, and its quick growth is entirely due to its having been
discovered to possess the best harbour on the coast, and to be therefore
the fittest point of departure from the sea for the territories of the
British South African Company.

In old days the chief Portuguese settlement on this part of the coast
was at Sofala, a few miles farther to the south, which had been visited
by Vasco da Gama in A.D. 1502, and where the Portuguese built a fort in
1505. It was then an Arab town, and famous as the place whence most of
the gold brought down from the interior was exported. Now it has shrunk
to insignificance, and Beira will probably become the most important
haven on the coast between Delagoa Bay, to the south, and Dar-es-Salaam,
the head-quarters of German administration, to the north. It may,
however, be rivalled by Pemba Bay north of the Zambesi, from which it is
proposed to run a railway to the south end of Lake Nyassa.